On Being an African American in The Fifties - Part IV

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority.  

The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority. 

 ~Ralph W. Sockman

(The Quotegarden)

Back in the real world, Chicago, after living in a fantasy land in Panama, it was time to get about the business of becoming an adult: finding a job, finishing school, raising a family, and finding a place to live.

Our first son, Charles David, was born May 21, 1956, in Chicago and Moody was transferred to Ft. Benning, Ga, where we lived on base.  White officers could live in the city, Columbus, but Blacks could not live in all areas.  This worked to our advantage because we had a big house on base.  For once, white officers were jealous of us because we didn't have to pay rent.  When we went to visit them they would leave their garage door open and we would drive directly into the garage so their neighbors couldn't see us visiting.

In Chicago, in October 1956, we had a difficult time finding affordable housing.  The practice of blockbusting by real estate agents encouraged white property owners to sell their houses at a loss, by fraudulently implying that racial, ethnic, or religious minorities — blacks, Hispanics, Jews et al. — were moving into their previously racially segregated neighborhood, and so would depress real estate property values.  Sometimes they would even hire Black people to walk around a neighborhood to scare white people into selling.  White people were terrified about Black people moving into "their" neighborhood.  (Sounds almost like the town hall people who want to take back "their" country.) A community could "turn" almost overnight from white to Black.

Somehow we finally found a very nice one bedroom apartment in a neighborhood that was "changing."  Our rent was $100 a month and my husband made $50 a week screening dog feces at the University of Chicago.  People in factories said he was too educated and places where he could use his degree didn't want to hire a Black person.  These experiences honed our determination to fight injustice.  There was a resentment of our circumstances but it did not diminish our expectations for a better life.

To help bring money into the house while I was completing college, I worked evenings as a coder at Time Magazine, as a secretary during the day at the college, and carried 20 credit hours my student teaching year. One of my fellow students and friend was Emmett Till's mother and we spent time talking about his death but she refused to let his murder stop her from living her life.  I always admired her strength and calmness.  African American student teachers were not allowed to practice in white schools and in 1958, I finally finished college, only a year late. 

Graduation Day with my Mother

Another way to bring in money was for Moody to go back to school.  He could receive $160 a month since he was a veteran and college only cost $1.50 a credit hour.  ($1.50 is not a typo. Can you believe these prices?) He dropped his plans for medical school and earned a master's degree.  Needing money worked out to our advantage because he eventually received a PhD from Northwestern University.

Chance and adaptability entered our lives.  Mystical occurrences and serendipity became commonplace and an invisible presence seemed to follow us.  We never found out who recommended us to the real estate agency when we got our first apartment.  Someone, we never found out who it was, found him a job in Oak Forest as a lab technician.  Life was looking better and once I started teaching we could buy a car, a new 1958 Ford that cost $2400.  He now made over $300 a month and I made $400 a month.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott (December 1955-December 1956) was a protest that was sparked by Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white person.  The boycott protested the practice of Black passengers  having to sit at the back of the bus, but if it was crowded they were expected to give up their seats to white passengers.  When Mrs. Parks was arrested, the Montgomery Improvement Association was established to lead the boycott.  The boycott catapulted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to national prominence and gave the Civil Rights Movement a big victory.  A national struggle was born.

Little Rock was a defining desegregation event of the decade.  The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students who were selected to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957.  The Governor, Orval Faubus, the National Guard, and rowdy crowds had protests and blocked their entrance to the school.  After many days of violent protests, President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000 member Arkansas National Guard.  President Eisenhower stated in his radio and TV address: 


Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts....


Whenever normal agencies prove inadequate to the task and it becomes necessary for the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to use its powers and authority to uphold Federal Courts, the President’s responsibility is inescapable. In accordance with that responsibility, I have today issued an Executive Order directing the use of troops under Federal authority to aid in the execution of Federal law at Little Rock, Arkansas. This became necessary when my Proclamation of yesterday was not observed, and the obstruction of justice still continues.


It is important that the reasons for my action be understood by all our citizens. As you know, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that separate public educational facilities for the races are inherently unequal and therefore compulsory school segregation laws are unconstitutional.... 


On September 25, the nine students finally successfully entered the school. However, they were subjected to vicious physical and verbal abuse by students, parents, and community people and all but one, Minnijean Brown, graduated.  She was suspended, not because of something she did, and transferred to a high school in New York.

Incidents starting taking place all over the country, in the North and South, as people resisted desegregation.  Change was coming to America because this time whites were working with Blacks to help achieve equality.  This time there would be no turning back.

I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - 

and I might even be said to possess a mind.  

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.  

~Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man, 1952

A few selected events of the '50s

• The Korean War (1950-1953)
• The Red Scare and anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy era.
• The U.S. reaction to the 1957 launch by the Soviet Union of the Sputnik satellite, a major milepost of the Cold War.
• Francis Crick and James D. Watson discover the helical structure of DNA at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.
• Polio vaccine developed.
• Suez Canal crisis.
• Emmett Till is murdered in Money, MS for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
• Althea Gibson becomes the first African American tennis player to win a major title by winning both the women's singles and doubles championships at Wimbledon.
• Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun is the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. 
• Chuck Berry travels from St. Louis to Chicago, recording Maybellene, an immediate sensation among teenagers. The hit helps shape the evolution of rock and roll.
• Fullback Jim Brown begins his professional football career with the Cleveland Browns. He leads the National Football League in rushing for eight of his nine seasons.
• Singer Ray Charles records What'd I Say, which becomes his first million-seller, and exemplifies the emergence of soul music, combining rhythm and blues with gospel.
• Motown Records is founded in Detroit, MI by Berry Gordy, Jr.
• Baseball player Ernie Banks is named the National League's Most Valuable Player for a second consecutive season.

On Being an African American in the Fifties, Part III

 The Fifties, Part III

We're all accidental soldiers in the army of life.

Ymber Delecto

In June, not long after my 18th birthday, I went to Ft. Hamilton, New York to board my ship.  I arrived early for orientation.  There was only one other Black woman on base,  and we became friends.  She had been traveling with her husband for years, mentored me, and we ate together every day at the NCO Club.  The day before we left they posted the wives' names along with their husbands' names and rank.   She was shocked when she discovered that my husband was an officer and told me we couldn't be friends because her husband wasn't an officer.  I shrugged my shoulders and said, "We will be friends."  On the ship I would slip down to her room and we would visit.  When we got ready to dock she told me she was a beautician and she did my hair the whole time we were in Panama.  Suppose I had obeyed the rule about not being friendly with women whose husbands weren't officers?  Lesson learned.

My roommate on the ship was from South Dakota and she had never seen a Black person.  We became fast friends and on the fourth day she got up the courage to ask me how did I hide my tail?  I was puzzled.  What did she mean?  She had been told that Black people had tails and I was very successful at hiding mine.  We both had a good laugh when I told her that was a lie.  I thought I had heard every stereotype but this was a new one for me. It gave us an opportunity to discuss other myths about both races and we stayed friends the whole time we were in Panama.

I still remember the day in June 1955, when the ship full of soldiers' wives arrived in Colon, Panama.  We all dressed our best and my new friend did my hair. The warm, tropical air hit me like a warm sauna.  The female passengers on the ship waved to the many waiting soldiers, each looking for only one person, her husband.  A scream could be heard whenever one woman found her spouse.  It was easy for me.  There were only two Black officers waiting for the ship and I knew both of them.  What an overwhelming, romantic way to begin a marriage.  Who knew it would last over fifty years?

Our Home  - Ft. Davis, Canal Zone

We spent a magical year in Panama, young and in love, enjoying the perks that officers had and traveled around the area.  I played bridge, bowled, shopped, and went to luncheons and parties.  This was a very different lifestyle for a woman who grew up on welfare and lived in a one bedroom apartment with 10 other relatives. 

Black officers in an integrated army was still rather new.  Even though President Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948 it wasn't done with deliberate speed.  Integration in the armed services was still in the early stages.  My husband was the only Black Officer in his company and a few others were scattered over the Canal Zone. 

He didn't like army food.  When he was officer of the day at the locks I would take him lunch and dinner.  We would sit by the locks and lazily watch the ships going through the canal.  One of the most exciting days was the day the Ile de France docked in Colon.  Everyone went down to see the majestic ocean liner.  Sometimes we would get with a group, rent a boat, and take a ride through Gatun Lake.

I guess we're blessed because we didn't have problems on or off base.  This was the first time in our lives that we had white friends and for most of them it was the first time they had Black friends.  It was a learning experience for all of us.  

We were all newlyweds since most of the younger officers got married when they received their orders.  After nine months we all had a "go to hell" party for the people who said we got married because we were pregnant. 

For some reason I could never learn to drive our 1947 Dodge.  I kept having accidents and running into palm trees.  The children who lived in the area would run when they saw me coming.  Sometimes when I returned to base, the guard would stop my car and insist on driving me home.

I was surprised to find that segregation existed in the Canal Zone, also, but it was more by color than race, the lighter the better.  The water fountains were labeled "silver" and "gold," instead of white and colored.

Our maid was from Jamaica. Yes, the young lady who used to clean white people's homes on Saturdays now had a maid, but having a maid was mandatory for officers and a culture shock for me.  Maids had to wash clothes by hand in outdoor tubs and iron them in their quarters behind our house.  Because of the humidity sometimes my husband had to change uniforms twice a day. We would surreptitiously buy her pasteurized milk (We didn't have homogenized  milk then.) at the PX because only raw milk was available in town.

Since I had finished only two years of college, I took classes at a branch of Louisiana State University (LSU).  My professors were surprised to see me because they had never taught a "Negro" student.  LSU was white.  They were even more surprised that I could do the work and asked me to come back to the states to see if they could force desegregation on the Baton Rouge campus.  I thought about it but refused because I wanted a degree in a hurry since my Mom wouldn't speak to my husband until I finished.  It was 1964 before African American students would be admitted to the Baton Rouge campus.

Finally, I did get pregnant and the doctors expected complications.  They advised me to return to the States because the men spent a lot of time away and the trip to the hospital was through the jungle to Coco Solo Naval Base.  It's a good thing I came back to the States in case my son wants to run for President.  The birthers won't get him.

A mother is a person who seeing there are only

 four pieces of pie for five people, 

promptly announces she never did care for pie.  

~Tenneva Jordan

On Being an African American in the Fifties - Part 1

I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women

 join the unqualified men in running our government. 

 ~Cissy Farenthold

It's complicated, race in America. While I have plans to do blog posts on memories of each decade, I feel it is necessary to also do a separate posting on my memories of race for that decade.  I thought about it because of Rep. Wilson shameful heckling of President Obama with, "You lie," on September 9, 2009, while the President was giving his stirring speech on health care at a Joint Session of Congress.  Without the background on race, the rest of the story might not make sense.  And that's the purpose of the blog, to help me make sense of my life and experiences.

Real life has a way of making us change our focus as memories of past incidents creep forward in our mind.  His comments, the rowdy town hall meetings, and the frenzied actions of the birthers and teabaggers remind us that we've seen this before.  "It's deja vu all over again," as Yogi Berra remarked.  It also reminded me how much of our lives has been defined by race.

Segregation in the 50s' was legal (de jure segregation) in the South.  In the North it was called "de facto segregation" "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but without being officially established".  (Wikipedia)  That meant that we went to segregated schools, even though we had neighborhood schools, because we lived, not by choice, in Black neighborhoods .   In practice, landlords would not even show Blacks an apartment in a white neighborhood and banks would not give you loans to buy a home in a white neighborhood. There were some white areas of the city and suburbs where African Americans did not even think about visiting, (think Cicero, Illinois) unless they were working, and then they got out before dark.


In the North we could go into department stores try on clothes and buy what we wanted.  We could eat in restaurants and stay in most hotels.  The South was different.  Everything was separate, but definitely not equal.

I remember my first visit to Georgia in 1951 at the age of 14.  I was born in Chicago but all of the older family members were born in Georgia and came to Chicago during the Great Migration.  They thought it important that those of us born in Chicago take a trip South to see what it was all about.

An aunt took me on my trip because she was making her annual trek back to Georgia.  I was excited, not knowing what to expect.  Even though we left from Chicago, we traveled in segregated trains cars; they told us they had to do this because we were going South and the races didn't mix.  We couldn't eat in the dining car because that was reserved for whites.  We had to pack enough food to last almost 20 hours.

I loved standing on the gangway connection between the cars, relishing the country smells of cut grass and animal life, listening to the clickety-clack of the train wheels, observing the dilapidated housing the further South we went, and wondering about the shoeless people in the shabby clothes who waved to us on the train.   The further South we went, the worse the housing became.  The ramshackle houses were occupied by whites and Blacks and I noticed that most of the houses had another small shack out back.

In Social Circle, Georgia I had my first experience in a segregated movie theater.  We sat in the balcony and I still can feel the hard, wooden bench we had for "seats."  The whites had comfortable, separate seats on the first floor.  I cannot remember the movie that was on the screen because I kept trying to process the separation of the races and couldn't understand why we had to sit on hard benches.

And then we went to a restaurant to eat and had to enter though the back where we had segregated seating.  I scratched my head trying to figure why we ate in one area and whites ate in another area, even though the food that was served to both groups came from the same kitchen.  It didn't make sense to me.

I stared and stared at the colored and white drinking fountains.  By then I thought the South was crazy.  How could people live like this?  Don't get me started on the nasty, nasty, places they called colored restrooms.

The relative we stayed with had an outhouse and I made the mistake of looking into the hole we sat on. I was always curious about how things work and was never the same after that.  I developed the strongest bladder after that incident.  There was a gas station down the road and I walked there twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening after dinner, because they had real toilets.  I was only 14 years old but I convinced the owner that he had to let me use his toilet.  I think he felt sorry for this northern "fool" and never turned me away, even though he didn't have a colored restroom.

The best part of the trip was the food.  Each morning we went out to the fields to "get dinner."  Whatever we wanted to eat was in the yard:  corn, peas, greens, and the best watermelon I've ever had.  Then we had to kill a couple of chickens.  I'll never forget how fresh and tasty everything was.

After that trip, I understood why members of my family who were born in the North had to make the trip down South.  We needed to know why our relatives left the deep South and how "lucky" we were to live in the North.  We needed to experience what legal segregation was and why we shouldn't accept it.  We needed to know that our ancestors had suffered much worse.  We needed to know that we should never forget.

I swear to the Lord

I still can't see

Why Democracy means

Everybody but me.

~Langston Hughes, The Black Man Speaks